One week into my month of practicing patience, here’s what’s come up for me:  I’m learning to be patient with my sadness. It’s not what I expected to emerge. (I thought the most obvious thing would be my own impatience!) But after a week of midterm elections, contentious news reporting, and more mass shootings, it doesn’t seem that unexpected, either.

The thing about sadness is that we so often want to rush through it. Or ignore it. Or find a quick fix for whatever is causing it. But when we’re faced with big problems–like systemic racism and cultural violence and a lack of empathy and compassion for each other–there is no quick fix. There’s no easy answer. And if you’re paying attention, ignoring it ceases to be an option.

Here’s where patience comes in. When we define patience as gentle forbearance, as the soft way we deal with whatever issues come up for us or around us, it becomes obvious that we’re going to need to become friends with our sadness.

I know this is a balance. We don’t want to wallow in it, but I worry we sometimes rush toward changing our attitude, too. In my opinion, if we rush toward “naming our gratitude” or “thinking of an action plan,” we may be deceiving ourselves. Even healthy things can be creative ways to avoid feeling.

This week was my first week post-surgery. It’s the slow week. The one with little progress and a lot of hours logged into this machine that moves my leg back and forth. It’s given me a lot of time to think…and feel. Normally, I’m not the type to sit around feeling things. But thanks to practicing patience, I just…stayed. Let myself feel the sadness. And what I realized is that I felt a heightened connection to all the places in the world where people are experiencing sadness.

I don’t think that’s the whole answer, but I do believe that feeling of solidarity is the beginning of every answer. That’s when we move toward the kind of open-hearted action that does actually change things.

As I’ve tried to befriend my sadness the past couple of years, what I’ve noticed is that it’s always present. And that’s because we live in a world that’s often heartbreaking. But what I’ve also noticed is that our capacity to hold the sadness is bigger than we think. Because our love, our compassion, our empathy, has room for it. It envelops it. The sadness is there, but the love is also enough.

We begin to have confidence in this–in love–when we’re patient with our sadness. We begin to realize that our sadness makes us stronger.

So, one week in, here’s the beautiful truth that’s been shown to me: Patience actually helps us become more brave.

The world needs our bravery, beloveds. And also–I think we need the bravery that comes from practicing patience.

So…my prayer and blessing for you this next week:

Trust that you can hold the sadness.

Trust that love is enough.

Wait patiently for the bravery within you to come to light. It’s there. It’s within all of us. And we need it for all that lies ahead.

This post is part of the Paramita Project. Read all my posts on practicing patience here.